Sociology 2600: Social problems
Terms
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- Gendered institutions
- All social institutions are organized by gender
- Sexuality
- way of organizing the social world based on sexual identity
- Male Dominance
- Beliefs, meanings, and placement that value men over women and that institutionalize male control of societally valued resources
- Compulsory Heterosexuality
- The system of sexuality that imposes negative sanctions on those who are homo or bisexual
- Gender Roles Approach:
- Males and females differ because of socialization. The assumption is that males and females learn to be different
- Patriarchy
- Forms of social organization in which men are dominant over women
- Capitalist Patriarchy
- Conditions of capitalism in which male supremacy keeps women in subordinate roles at work and in the home
- Gender Structure Approach
- Males and females differ because of factors external to them
- Subjective Nature of Social Problems
- What is and what is not a social problem is a matter of definition. Thus, social problems vary greatly by time and place.
- Objective Reality of Social Problems
- There are societal conditions that harm certain segments of the population and therefore, are social problems
- Self-Actualization
- The assumed need (by Maslow) of individuals for creative and constructive involvement in productive, significant activity.
- Social Problems
- Societal induced conditions that harm any segment of the population, and acts and conditions that violate the norms and values found in society.
- Sociological Imagination
- C. Wright Mill’s term emphasizing that individual troubles are inextricably linked to social forces
- Person-Blame
- The assumption that social problems results from the pathologies of the individuals
- System Blame
- assumption that social problems result from social conditions
- Cultural Deprivation
- The assumption by the members of a group that the culture of some other grup is not only inferior but also deficient. This term is usually applied by members of the majority to the culture of a minority group.
- Recidivism
- Re-involvement in Crime
- Social Darwinism
- The belief that the place of people in the stratification system is a function of their ability and effort.
- Deviant Behavior
- that violates the norms of a social organization.
- Capitalism
- The economic system based on private ownership of property, guided by the seeking of maximum profits.
- Socialism
- The economic system in which the means of production are owned by the people for their collective benefit.
- Shared Monopoly
- When four or fewer companies control 50 percent or more of an industry
- Interlocking Directorate
- The linkage between corporations that results when an individual serves on the board of directors of two companies (a direct interlock) or when two companies each have a director on the board of a third company (indirect interlock)
- Oligarchy:
- A political system of rule by the few
- Plutoarchy
- A government by or in the interest of the rich
- Democracy
- A political system that is of, by, and for the people
- Power Elite
- : People who occupy the power roles in society. They either are wealthy or represent the wealthy
- Systemic Imperatives
- The economic and social constraints on political decision makers that promote the status quo
- Fertility Rate
- The average number of children born to each woman in a country or region
- Modern demographic Transition
- A three stage pattern of population change occurring as societies industrialize and urbanize, resulting ultimately in a low and stable population rate
- Absolute Poverty
- : A condition of life so degraded by disease, illiteracy, malnutrition, and squalor as to deny its victims the basic necessities. Statistically those making less than $1 a day are in this category.
- Life Chances
- The chances throughout one’s life cycle to live and experience the good things in life
- Pandemic
- A worldwide epidemic
- New Slavery
- The new slavery differs from traditional slavery in that it is, for the most part, not a lifelong condition and sometimes individuals and families become slaves by choice – a choice forced by extreme poverty
- Colony
- A territory controlled by a powerful country that exploits the land and the people for its own benefit
- Transnational Corporation
- A profit oriented company engaged in business activities on more than one nation
- Corporate Dumping
- The exporting of goods by a business that have either been banned or not approved for sale in the US because they are dangerous
- Biosphere
- The surface layer of the planet and the surrounding atmosphere
- Ecosystems
- The mechanisms (plants, animals, and microorganisms) that supply people with the essentials of life
- Environmental Justice
- A movement to improve community environments by eliminating toxic hazards
- Environmental Racism
- The overwhelming likelihood that toxic producing plants and toxic waste dumps are located where poor people, especially people of color live
- Greenhouse Effect:
- When gases accumulate in Earth’s atmosphere and act like the glass roof in a greenhouse, allowing sunlight in but trapping heat that is generated
- Culture:
- The knowledge (ideas, values, beliefs) that the members of a social organization share
- Cornucopia view of nature
- the belief that nature is a vast and bountiful storehouse to be used by human beings
- Planned Obsolescence
- Existing products are given superficial changes and marketed as new, making the previous products out of date
- Environmental Classism
- poor, because of dangerous jobs and residential segregation, are more exposed than the more well to do to environmental dangers.
- Redlining
- When banks, savings and loans, government agencies, and insurance companies refuse to make home and small-business loans and insure property in poor and minority neighborhoods
- Poverty Areas
- neighborhoods in which at least one in five households live below the poverty line
- High Poverty Areas
- neighborhoods where at least two in five households live below the poverty line
- Gentrification
- The redevelopment of poor and working class urban neighborhoods into middle and upper middle class enclaves: often involves displacement of original residents
- Slumlording
- Landlords buy properties in poor neighborhoods for rent income. They do not maintain these properties because to do so would lower their profits
- Warehousing
- The withholding of apartments from the housing market by speculators who hope to sell them at a profit to developers
- Job/Housing Mismatch
- The inability of central city residents most in need of decent jobs to reach them on the urban fringe because 1 they cannot afford to operate a private automobile and 2 the public transportation system is inadequate; moving to the urban fringe is not an option because of housing costs and racial segregation. To the extent that jobs and job growth occur in one place, affluent and White and poor black and latinos are restricted to another, this mismatch is a form of spatial apartheid.
- Triage:
- The practice in understaffed and underfinanced public hospitals of treating the most urgent emergencies first, thereby delaying the treatment of other cases.
- Informal Economy
- When opportunities are not present in the regular legal economy, people in poor ineer city neighborhoods often turn to this alternate economic exchange and activity for survival; much of the informal economy is illegal activity involving crime and drug trafficking.
- White flight
- The movement of predominantly upper middle class, middle class, and working class Whites from the central cities to the burbs.
- Boomburg
- A suburban city of at least 100,000 that has experienced a double digit growth each decade since it became urban.
- Urban Sprawl
- low density, automobile dependent development outside the central city.
- Rural
- The non-metropolitan population that resides in small cities and the open countryside
- Persistently poor counties
- Counties with continuous poverty rates of 30 percent or higher
- Colonias
- Shanytown settlements of Latino immigrants
- Poverty
- Standard of living below the minimum needed for the maintenance of adequate diet, health, and shelter
- Official Poverty Line or Threshold
- Arbitrary line computed by multiplying the cost of a basic nutritionally adequate diet by 3
- Feminization of Poverty
- Viewed erroneously as a trend for contemporary women to be more economically vulnerable than men. This view obscures the fact that woman have always been poorer than men, especially older women and women of color
- New Poor
- Poor who are displaced by new technologies or whose jobs have moved away to the suburbs, to other regions of the country or out of the country. They have less hope of escaping poverty than did the old poor
- Old Poor
- Poor of an earlier generation who had hopes of breaking out of poverty because unskilled and semiskilled jobs were plentiful
- Working Poor
- People who work but remain below their poverty threshold
- Near Poor
- People whose income are above that of the poverty threshold but below 125 percent of that threshold
- Severely Poor
- People whose cash incomes are at half of the poverty line or less
- Welfare
- Government monies and services provided to the poor
- Wealthfare
- Government subsidies to the non-poor
- Tax Expenditures
- Legal tax loopholes that allow the affluent to escape paying certain taxes and therefore to receive a subside (the tax deduction to home owners)
- Regressive Tax
- Tax rate that remains the same for all people, poor or rich. The result is that poor people pay a larger portion of their wealth than do affluent people
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
- Event that occurs because it is predicted. That is, the prophecy is fulfilled because people alter their behavior to conform to prediction
- Culture of Poverty
- View that the poor are qualitatively different in values and lifestyle from the rest of society and that these cultural differences explain continued poverty
- Blaming the victim
- belief that some individuals are poor, criminals, or school dropouts because they have a flaw within them, which ignores the social factors affecting their behaviors
- Institutional Discrimination
- When the social arrangement and accepted ways of doing things in society disadvantage minority groups.
- Majority Group
- Dominant group in society
- Racial Stratification
- System of inequality in which race is the major criterion for rank and rewards
- Minority Group
- Subordinate group of society
- Racial formation
- Sociohistorical process by which races are continually being shaped and transformed
- Ethnicity
- Culturally distinctive characteristics based on race, religion, and national origin
- Racial-Ethnic Group
- Group labeled as a race by the wider society and bound together by common social and economic conditions, resulting in distinctive cultural and ethnic characteristics
- Deficiency Theories
- Explanations that view the secondary status of minorities as the result of their own behaviors and cultural traits
- Bias Theory
- Explanations that blame the prejudiced attitudes of majority members for the secondary status of minorities
- Structural discrimination theory
- Explanations that focus on the institutionalized patterns of discrimination as the sources of the secondary status of minorities
- Individual Racism
- Overt acts by individuals that harm members of another race
- Institutional Racism
- Established and customary social arrangements that exclude on the basis of race
- Colonial Theory
- Argues that race was used by the dominant group in society to oppress a racial minority.
- Nativism
- Hostility towards immigrants, and efforts to restrict their rights
- Color Blindness
- Idea that race no longer matters in explaining inequality or in policy making, since racism has been overcome
- Sex
- Biological fact of femaleness and maleness
- Gender
- Cultural and social definitions of feminine and masculine
- Gendered
- Differentiation of womens and mens behaviors, activities, and worth
- Feminist Approach
- View that supports equal relations between men and women
- Gender Stratification
- Differential ranking and rewarding of women’s and men’s roles
- Androgyny
- The integration of traditional feminine and masculine characteristics
- Gender Segregation
- Pattern whereby women and men are situated in different jobs throughout the labor force.
- Pay equity
- Raising pay scales according to the worth of the job instead of the personal characteristics of the workers
- Glass Ceiling
- invisible barrier that limit women’s upward occupational mobility.
- Human Agency
- People are agents and actors who cope with, adapt to, and change social structures to meet their needs
- Demography
- The study of population
- Fertility
- Birth Rate
- Mortality
- Death Rate
- Baby Boom Generation
- The term referring to people born in the 15-year period following WW2, when an extraordinary number of babies were born in the US
- Dependency Ratio
- The proportion of the population who work compared to the proportion who don’t work
- Therapeutic Care
- The approach in a health facility that focuses on meeting the needs of residents
- Custodial Care
- The approach in a health facility that focuses on meeting the needs of the institution, resulting in poor quality care for the patients
- Beanpole Family Structure
- : A family structure in which the number of living generations within linkages increases, but there is an intergenerational contraction in the number of members within each generation
- Ageism
- The devaluation of and the discrimination against the elderly
- Disengagement:
- The response by some people to the aging process of retreating from relationships, organizations, and society
- Deviance
- Behavior that does not conform to social expectations
- Heterosexuality
- Sexual orientation towards someone of the opposite sex
- Homosexuality
- Sexual orientation towards someone of the same sex
- Bisexuality
- orientation towards or attraction to both sexes
- Master Status
- Position so important that it dominates all other things.
- Stigma
- Powerful negative social label that affects a person’s social identification and self-concept
- Sexual Preference
- Person’s choice regarding the sex of people to whom he or she is attracted
- Sexual Orientation
- Sexual attraction to the same or opposite sex is not a matter of choice but is determined by genetic or environmental factors
- Homophobia
- Fear or loathing of homosexuality and homosexuals
- Sodomy
- Oral or Anal sex
- Secret Gays
- Homosexuals who conceal their sexual orientation
- Gay Activists
- Homosexuals who openly identify themselves as such and challenge society in an effort to eliminate the stigma and discrimination they face
- Scientific Management
- Efforts to increase worker efficiency by breaking down work into very specialized tasks, the standardization of tools and procedures, and the speeding up of repetitive work
- Alienation
- Separation of human beings from each other, from themselves, and from the products they create
- Sweatshop
- Substandard working environment where labor laws are violated
- Segmented or Dual Labor Market
- Capitalist economy is divided into two distinct sectors-one in which production and working conditions are relatively stable and secure, the other composed of marginal firms in which working conditions, wages and job security is low
- Discouraged Workers
- People who have not actively sought work for 4 weeks. These people are not counted as unemployed by the bureau of labor stats
- Reserve Army of the Unemployed
- Unemployed people who want to work. Their presence tends to depress the wages of workers and keeps those workers from making demands on employers for fear of being replaced
- Globalization
- process by which the earth’s people are increasingly interconnected economically, politically, culturally, and environmentally
- Capital Flight
- Investment choices that involve the movement of corporate monies from one investment to another (investment overseas, plant relocation, and mergers)
- Outsourcing
- The hiring of foreign firms to provide information based good and services to the US companies and their consumers
- Structural Transformation of the economy
- Fundamental change of the economy resulting from several powerful contemporary forces; technological breakthroughs in microelectronics, the globalization of the economy, capital flight, and the shift from a manufacturing economy to one based on information and services
- Sunset industries
- industries declining in output and employment
- Sunrise industries
- industries characterized by increased output and employment
- Contingent Employment
- Employment arrangement where employees work as temporaries or independent contractors, freeing employers from paying fringe benefits
- Displaced Workers
- Unemployed workers who face never being employed at comparably paying jobs because their training and skills have become obsolete.
- Family
- Social arrangements whereby people related by ancestry, marriage, or cohabitation live together, form an economic unit, and often raise children
- Household
- Residential unit in which members share resources. These units vary in membership and composition. A household is not always a family (parents and children) and a family is not always a household (because it may be separate geographically)
- Downward mobility
- movement to a lower social class
- Modern Family
- Nuclear families that emerged in response to the requirements of an urban, industrial society. It consisted of an intact nuclear household unit with the male breadwinner, full time homemaker wife and their dependent children
- Postmodern Family
- Multiple family forms and household arrangements that have emerged as a result of a number of social factors, such as women in the labor force, divorce, remarriage, and cohabitation arrangements
- Nonfamily households
- Persons who live alone or with unrelated individuals
- Dual Worker Family
- Family in which both spouses are in the labor force
- Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993
- Federal law providing workers in establishments with more than fifty workers the right to unpaid, job protected leave for meeting family health needs
- Family Values
- Conservative phrase supporting the two-parent family. The implication is that all other family arrangements are the source of social problems
- Wife Abuse
- Use of physical force by a man against his intimate cohabiting partner
- Child Abuse
- Distinctive acts of violence and nonviolence and acts of omission and commission that place children at risk
- Pronatalism
- Strong positive value a society places on having children
- Tracking
- Ability grouping in Schools
- Student Subculture
- Members of the disadvantaged band together in a group with values and behaviors antagonistic toward school
- Infant Mortality Rate
- Number of deaths per 1000 live births
- Defensive medicine
- The practice of requiring extra diagnostic tests and medical procedures to protect the physician from liability
- Medicare
- Government program that provides partial coverage of medical costs primarily for people over age 65
- Medicaid
- Government health program for the poor
- Patient Dumping
- Practice by physicians and private hospitals of treating only patients who can afford their services
- Health Maintenance organization
- Health program in which members pay a fixed annual fee in return for all necessary health services
- Medlining
- Practice of managed care companies of limiting the number of patients with health problems and maximizing the number of healthy patients
- Single Payer Plan
- Tax supported health program in which the government is the sole insurer
- Crime
- An act that breaks the law
- Violence
- act of force perceived by the powerful as threatening to the status quo
- Moral Order Crimes
- Acts that violate the laws that enforce the morality of the majority
- Victimless Crimes
- Acts that violate moral order crimes; they may offend the majority but they do not harm other people
- Secondary Deviance
- Deviant behavior that is a consequence of the self-fulfilling prophecy of a negative label
- Organized Crime
- A business operation that seeks profit by supplying illegal goods and services
- White Collar Crimes
- Illicit acts committed by middle class and upper middle class people in their business and social activities
- Corporate Crime
- Illegal acts by business enterprises.
- Political Crimes
- Illegal acts intended to influence the political system. Also the abuse of authority by those in power. Finally, actions by the governments that are illegal or immoral.
- Racial Profiling
- The practice of targeting citizens for police encounters on the basis of race
- Bail
- Posting of money by the accused to guarantee that he or she will be present at the trail
- Plea Bargaining
- Arrangement between the prosecution and the accused where the latter pleads guilty in return for a reduced charge.
- Adversary System
- The US system of justice, whereby the state and the accused engage in a public battle to argue and provide evidence before an impartial judge or jury
- Mandatory Sentencing
- By law, judges must incarcerate certain types of criminals
- Determinate sentencing
- For a given offense, a judge must impose a sentence that is within the guidelines of the law
- Underemployed
- Employed at a level below that for which one has been trained
- Capital Punishment
- Killing of the criminal by the state
- Parole
- Conditional release from prison in which the former prisoner remains under the supervision of a parole officer
- Recidivism Rate
- Percentage of offenders who after their treatment or punishment has ended, are arrest and convicted of new offenses.
- Drug
- substance that directly affects the brain or nervous system when ingested
- Social construction of drugs
- Definitions concerning drug-related behaviors based on meanings that people in groups have imputed to certain things and behaviors.
- Ontological Truth
- A universal and undeniable reality
- Politics of drugs
- The labeling of some drugs as licit and others as illicit depends on the definition of drugs by the most powerful interest groups, which are able to get their definitions incorporated into the law.
- Psychoactive Drug
- Chemical that alters the perceptions and or moods of people who take it
- Psychopharmacy
- Science of drugs that affect the mind
- Restorative Drug
- Chemical that heals a traumatized part of the body
- Additive drug
- A Chemical that improve performance
- Interdiction
- Public policy of stopping the flow of drugs into the US by guarding the borders and by curtailing the creation, processing, and distribution of drugs in other countries
- Heroin Maintenance
- British approach to heroin addiction that treats addicts as sick rather than as criminal. Thus addicts are placed under the jurisdiction of physicians who administer drugs to their patients.
- Methadone Maintenance
- Used for heroin maintenance, this provides a heroin substitute (methadone) to addicts under medical supervision
- Decriminalization of drugs
- Legalization of drugs
- War on Terror
- All of the actions taken by the US government in reponse to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 including the American led military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq
- Cold War
- The tension and arms race between the US and the USSR from WW2 until 1990
- Terrorism
- A methodology of using violence to gain political objectives. Officially defined by the US department of state as premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by sub national groups or clandestine agents.
- National Security
- The ways nations organize to protect borders, their national interest, and shield their citizens and businesses abroad with armies, military bases, intelligence networks, embassies and consulates. In the US, it is a responsibility of the president and cabinet members who run the departments of the government. Key government departments include State, Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security.
- Defense Budget
- The government’s spending plan for maintaining and upgrading the military defenses of the US.
- WMDs:
- Weapons that are purposely designed to be capable of destroying whole swaths of people and territory. Nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons are the main types that have been designed so far
- Bush Doctrine
- The policy guiding US military actions in the war on terror and the longer range plan for national security in the 21st century.
- Bush Doctrine 2
- The US policy for homeland security
- International Law
- The set of treaties and agreements that nations across the world have voluntarily entered into over the years
- Fortress Society
- A society that defends itself by creating barriers to block outside threats from penetrating its borders while expanding pathways for desired business and commerce across its borders at the same time
- Net Foreign Direct Investment
- The excess of private investment dollars going into a country from a foreign sources over investment dollars going out
- Official development assistance
- Government funded grants and loans to foreign countries for development projects
- Revolving door executives
- High level governments officials who move into or from high level corporate positions.